The Missing Juror

With a largely anonymous cast and a plot that is nothing to write home about, this little film from the 40's is still worth watching mainly for its noirish atmosphere and George MacReady's wonderful over-the-top performance as a wrongfully condemned man gone mad.

MacReady plays Harry Wharton, a man who is wrongfully convicted of killing his sweetheart and sentenced to hang. He sits on death row for months while reporter Joe Keats, who senses Wharton is innocent, tries to track down the real killer. Hours before the execution, Keats comes up with the evidence that points to another and Wharton is pardoned. However, no pardon will fix the fact that Wharton's mind has snapped. He is admitted to a mental hospital, but nothing eases his misery and he ultimately sets fire to his room before hanging himself. His body is burned beyond recognition. Now, months later, reporter Joe Keats is refocused on the Wharton case. This time because half a dozen of the Wharton jurors have died mysterious accidental deaths in a short period of time. Keats believes someone is avenging Wharton's wrongful conviction and subsequent suicide, but he can't prove it. Along the way he falls for a beautiful female juror who doesn't care to cooperate with his investigation.

If you watch it, you're going to know what's going on immediately. There is really no mystery here. However, it is amazing to watch what Columbia could do in the field of drama/noir/mystery during the 40's and 50's without nearly the resources of the other major studios or the star power. All the stuff you expect in such a film is here - the all night diner where reporters seem to congregate and the proprietor who's always handing out sage advice, the know-it-all reporter 40's style and his antagonistic relationship with a boss that still appreciates the reporter's craft and insight, the classy girl that the reporter sets his sights on and somehow winds up the center of the drama, and the mystery criminal that runs circles around multiple police departments and is only tripped up by one blood-hound of a journalist.

Recommended for fans of post-war and almost post-war fare.

"The Missing Juror" is worth seeing since it's an early directorial film of Budd Boetticher, so it has some of his great camerawork. The film stars noir actress Janis Carter, Jim Bannon, George Macready, and Mike Mazurki.

A man is tried and found guilty of murder, and then the jurors start dying. A reporter (Bannon) becomes interested in the case - and in one of the jurors (Carter).

The problem is, if you're old enough and enough of a film fan, you'll have this plot figured out fairly quickly.

My favorite part of this film, I have to admit, were the dictation belts which, thirty-plus years after this movie, I was using.

Breezy B detective movie from Columbia, who made some of the best B movies of the 1940s. Jim Bannon stars as a reporter investigating the murders of jurors from a high profile case. The mystery here is not very compelling. The identity of the killer is obvious from the start. So obvious that I have to wonder if it was even expected to fool the audience. Maybe it was supposed to be a Vertigo type of thing. At any rate, the movie is a fun watch despite the weak mystery. The cast is likable and director Budd Boetticher keeps things moving along quickly. The following year Bannon would rejoin co-star George Macready in the first of Bannon's short-lived I Love a Mystery series.

It looks like an early Richard Fleischer's movie for RKO, or also Bob Wise's for the same studio. But Columbia did the very same for the likes of Budd Boetticher, Edward Dmytryk, William Castle, hirig them for short and fast paced thrillers. This one is excellent as another from Boetticher: BEHIND LOCKED DOORS, that I will comment tomorrow. This topic looks much like the thirties mystery yarns, but here it moves up a gear. Boetticher was a real gifted good director, it also reminds me early Anthony Mann's films, for RKO if my memory is good. Nothing here let us guess this film maker will be a provider of awesome little westerns, starring Randolph Scott.

The story may have more holes than Grandma's sieve, but it's still worth catching up with. For one, it's got cult actress Janis Carter who always shows more eyeball than ought to be legally allowed, along with the high-class George Macready just then perfecting his mad cackle-- and whoever in production thought his cultured voice was not a dead give-a-way. It's also one of director Buddy Boetticher's first outings, and already he's a camera master—catch those graceful dolly moves across the cut-a-way rooms. Then there's literary muscleman and masseuse Mike Mazurki throttling Macready's face blue while on a flight of poetic abandon. I just wish some of that imagination had carried over to repairing the story holes, like how crank-confessor Trevor Bardette knows so many details of the killings. Speaking of Bardette, his highly enthused performance suggests A-grade pay for a B-grade movie, making his mad lather a movie high point. Clearly, the 50-dollar budget didn't go into lighting since some scenes resemble a bat's cave and require the eyes of one to make out what's happening. Nonetheless, the film has almost as many promising noirish elements as the classic Stranger on the Third Floor (1940)—as another reviewer aptly compares. Too bad someone didn't send the script down to Rewrite for some hole-plugging plaster.